Two Sussex football fans have escaped being banned from attending matches after police stopped them at Gatwick.

They appeared at a special court in Crawley yesterday after being stopped from catching flights to Amsterdam to attend last night's Holland-England game.

Peter Wilmott, 34, of Seafield Road, Hove, and Mark Entiknap, 25, of Cold Walton Lane, Burgess Hill, were detained at the airport during a police anti-hooligan drive.

Sussex Police solicitor Paul Trott asked for exclusion orders to be granted which would have banned both men from attending domestic league, cup and international fixtures for up to three years.

The orders would also have meant the men having to surrender their passports to police at times of important matches overseas to ensure they did not leave the country.

Mr Trott said Wilmott and Entiknap had previous convictions for violence and public disorder, some of them football-related.

Entiknap agreed he had been convicted of causing actual bodily harm in a violent confrontation between Millwall and Charlton supporters but said: "That was when I was 18.

"In prison I was rehabilitated and I now have a steady job as a joiner and am married with two children."

Magistrates rejected the banning applications and both men were handed their passports by police.

They made their way back to Gatwick to try to catch alternative flights to Amsterdam.